Described as having “all the attributes of a national park,” the LF Ranch, listed at $52.5 million, sold in September. The LF Ranch includes more than 42,000 deeded and leased acres, from west of Augusta to the Lewis and Clark National Forest, which it borders for almost eight miles.
“Oil executive with Montana roots pegged as new owner of $52M Augusta ranch”
Article Written by Kristen Inbody | Great Falls Tribune – October 3rd
Described as having “all the attributes of a national park,” the LF Ranch, listed at $52.5 million, sold in September. The LF Ranch includes more than 42,000 deeded and leased acres, from west of Augusta to the Lewis and Clark National Forest, which it borders for almost eight miles.
“The buyer resonated with how unique the opportunity was, with the fisheries and the productive cattle operation,” Anderson said. “It checked all the boxes.”
Rumors circulated that the mystery buyer was Donald Trump Jr., a frequent visitor to Montana who is said to be shopping around for a ranch, but sources in Augusta said Felix Energy CEO Skye Callantine, a Belgrade native, Montana Tech graduate and Air Force veteran, bought the ranch.
Callantine founded Felix Energy in 2013, and the Denver-based company “has built and sold over $2.5 billion of assets consisting of upstream projects, midstream assets and mineral interests,” according to its website.
This year Callantine and his wife, Kambria, donated $1 million to Montana Tech.
As described in the listing: “The ranch rises from lush prairie grasses through riparian zones along its many creeks, past the iconic Haystack Butte, and up the Rocky Mountain Front to the Lewis and Clark National Forest, with which it shares a boundary for almost eight miles. The Rocky Mountain Front wraps around the Ranch on the south and west, forming what is, in effect, a privately-owned preserve with all the attributes of a national park.”
“The historic LF Ranch is, simply put, one of the most magnificent Montana ranches to become available in decades.”
Rancher J.B. Long assembled the property from several homesteads he bought in the early 1900s. A native of Cambridge, Mass., he was 20 when he headed out West. At one time, he owned, with associates, 175,000 sheep.
His daughter, Sarah, married Carl W. Johnston, who took over the ranch. Their son, an attorney in California, took over the operation, willing his land to the foundations at Yale and Stanford universities, which he attended. The foundations sold to the Pierce Family in 1989.
The ranch was owned by the Pierce family for the last 30 years, with the family adding five neighboring ranches to the LF.
However, the Pierce parents are in their 90s with six grown children and an extended family. None were full-time on the ranch, which had local manager — an arrangement expected to continue with the new owner, Anderson said.
The ranch is rich in wildlife and has 37 miles of “trophy trout fisheries.”
The ranch runs 1,300 head of cattle now and produced 700 tons of hay a year, consistently in the black, according to the listing.
The property includes 22,200 deeded acres, as well as 10,700 acres of a U.S. Forest Service grazing allotment ($570 for 403 animal unit months in 2017) and 9,315 acres leased from the state ($37,855 for 2,986 animal unit months last year).
The Swan Land Co. also brokered the sale of the 123,000-acre Broken O Ranch in Augusta to sports tycoon Stan Kroenke in 2012.
READ ARTICLE ON GFT | LF RANCH LISTING